Sterilize Recipes

"Chose promise, chose due!", I'm keeping my promise! And here is the recipe for guava jelly. Fully ripened guavas are highly perishable, so be sure to either eat them as is or cook them right away.

The concept is simple and easy to remember: for every cup of guava juice count 1 cup of sugar and the juice of half a lime. Once canned and rested, you'll have the tropical flavor of India captured in your sealed jars. You'll also be pleasantly surprised by the natural, sweet, most invigorating fragrance in your home! Then you know what to do: slather the beautiful jelly on your favorite bread and enjoy!

We were lucky enough to be able to pick a lot of figs in our garden this year. We had so many, I made several kinds of fig preserves. One of my favorite ways to use fig preserves is to pair it with goat cheese and it just so happened that I received delicious goat cheese from Cypress Grove Chevre today. I spread the two ingredients on crostini for a nice contrast of texture and flavor. I grilled day-old baguette and smeared a layer of goat cheese. The warmth from the bread let the goat cheese ooze and become creamier. The last layer was the fig preserves. I have to admit this easy appetizer is my favorite snack. I love them and could eat a ton!

I have a little story that might sound silly to you but Cypress Grove Chevre goat cheese is very dear to my heart. I remember when I first got married, my husband Lulu surprised me and took me on the 17-mile drive in Carmel, which I had never seen before. I remember he prepared the most romantic picnic on the beach and fed me wonderful Cypress Grove chevre. I had never heard of the company before that picnic but the cute packaging and beautiful scenery has since made it unforgettable to me. The cheese is rich and creamy and absolutely captures what I love about French chevre. It is one of the few American-made cheeses I’ve had that rival its French counterparts.

Cypress Grove Chevre will be a part of our December giveaways, so be sure to check back for your chance to win. Doesn't that sound awesome?

Every year, we make preserves with the fruits from the garden. As I told you in a recent post, I had it all planned out so that nothing would go to waste and was determined to create Orangina soda. I used the kumquat pulp for the syrup of the drink and used all the kumquat rind for marmalade. To repeat the same flavors of the soft drink, I added tangerine to the marmalade as well. To make the marmalade a bit fancier, I added some vanilla beans and vanilla extract at the end.

Making marmalade is labor intensive, so gather some friends and family to get through the process. Rest assured that your efforts will be rewarded. We cooked and canned 13 pounds of fresh kumquats. If sealed properly, you can keep the jars of marmalade for a year. Good luck holding on to it that long though. The girls have already gone through two jars! The sweet fragrance of the kumquats and vanilla is intoxicating. Spread a little (or a lot) on a slice of buttered toast, pour yourself a cup of tea and enjoy. It's the perfect way to start the day!

Mulberries look similar to blackberries, but they taste totally different. They are a combination of sweet, tart and peppery flavors. They are native to India, Pakistan and Iran. I believe the leaves are used to cultivate silkworms.

Lulu's dad, who is from India, loves mulberries. I think they remind him of his childhood. We always catch him red-handed when he sneaks out to the garden to pick mulberries. Mulberries are very difficult to pick without their leaking a little bit of juice. His white shirt and hands get stained with the juice of the berries and he comes back to the house with a grin on his face.

The darker they are, the better they taste. Daddy gathered a bunch of the fruit but the girls ate a lot of them and left me about a quart. No ripe mulberries were left on the tree. But what was left was more than enough to make some jam for breakfast. I made the jam so that we could enjoy mulberries during the fall and winter, but I have a feeling they won't make it that far!